Portable air conditioner efficiency

[MattSAU2XR8]

Hi guys,

Hoping one of our members might be a refrigeration mechanic or electrician and able to offer some advice on buying either a portable aircon or a portable split for a property I am renting... Probably be interesting reading for a bunch of other people too since I'm sure I'm not the only person buying a new aircon unit this summer.

What I'm really hoping to find out is the RELATIVE efficiency of a portable split aircon (with outdoor compressor unit) as compared to a regular portable aircon unit (which ducts hot air out a window).

Reason I'm putting so much thought into this is that I anticipate using it quite a bit over several years (living in Bundaberg) and so energy use might be along the lines of:

Assume I use it 6 hours per day for 200 days per year (more on some days and less on others) so a total of 1200 hours per year.

Assume I use it (and it lasts) for five years so total use is 7200 hours.

A large portable aircon unit seems to use about 1.5 KwH of power when running flat out,which it will probably be doing to cool a small unit.

Cost per KwH is ~ 22 cents in QLD

So the total cost of running the unit for 5 years as per above might be around $2376.

It might be possible to get the electricity a bit cheaper since Origin are currently offering 2 months cashback at the end of a year, so then it would become $1980.

Now if for example a portable aircon is 33% less efficient that a portable split, which seems quite likely, then over the five years it will waste $$650 of electricity as compared to a split.

If it's 50% less efficient then it will waste about $1000 of electricity.

And then there's the noise, and speed of cooling a room, and resale to consider as well, all of which the split will come out ahead on I think...

Grateful for any ideas, and ideally a link to a test someone has published online.

Matt